There's a difference between a road trip and exploring. A road trip's mission is to get from Pt A to Pt B with as little adventure as possible. With exploring an adventure and finding new things is the mission. So many people mix the two and their little adventure results in not reaching Pt B -- a massive search effort ensues.

My road trips are usually very long days (600+ highway miles). Okay, in my younger and more bulletproof days I would double that. The area between gas stations is just a blur. I mostly use the GPS to calculate ETA's and sometimes traffic detours, I'll know the primary roads/route from either memory or Rand & McNally prior to starting the trip.

Shovel, chains, cables et al stay in the truck. The battery is changed on time rather that after it fails.